Together with my warp engine light solution, here is my main board which controls the speed and direction of the motors and also includes the blinking running lights (saucer) and strobes (secondary hull). The board includes connectors to provide the +5V/GND power for the nacelle boards I previously posted, so all of this together will let you do the electronics for the 1/350 TOS E PL kit (except for the windows).

HOW TO TWEAK THE MOTOR CONTROL SKETCH-------------------------------------You may find that there is a minimum speed after which the motor will just hum. It does so because it does not have enough power to spin. By monitoring the values sent to the motor using the MotorControl sketch, you can find the motors minimum value to turn, and optimize the motorValue to turn the motor within its true range.

To find the range of motorValue, follow these steps:

1) With the MotorControl sketch uploaded, click the serial monitor button at the top right of your Arduino window.The serial monitor window will show you the potentiometer value followed by the output value that is being sent to the motor, in this fashion:potentiometer = 1023 motor = 255These values are displayed in a long list and update as you turn the potentiometer. If you do not see the list scrolling down, make sure that the Autoscroll option is selected.

2) Starting with your potentiometer reading a value of 0, turn your potentiometer very slowly until the humming stops and the motor starts spinning.

set "minRPM" variable to 0 first

3) Make a note of the value displayed at this point.

4) Use an if statement to tell the motor to change speed only if the value is greater than the minimum speed needed to spin the motor, as follows: (a). Find the part of your code that writes the motorValue to the motor:analogWrite(motorPin, motorValue); (b). Replace it with the following piece of code:if(motorValue > yourValue) { analogWrite(motorPin, motorValue);} else { digitalWrite(motorPin, LOW);}

5) Now replace yourValue with the number that you made a note of.If the value motorValue is greater than that, the motor speeds up. If it is lower than that, the pin is written LOW so that it is fully off. You could also type analogWrite(motorPin, 0) to accomplish the same thing. Tiny optimizations like this can help your project function smoothly, with no wasted movement or values.

// Even though you are using 2 identical motors (presumably), it is possible that they will not spin at the same speed// although we are passing in the same PWM/relative voltage to both motors. To allow for some degree of customization,// the two parameters below can be used to alter the PWM/relative voltage to one or both motors to try and balance// them out. Chances are you will not need to touch these, but they are here if you do.

// You can set these to +ve or -ve values, but they should be in the range of -10 to +10 at most. Note that you are// still limited to PWM values of 0-255. However, there is the stall PWM value for a motor to consider where the relative// voltage is too low for it to spin; the setRPM() function limits that to the minRPM but you could go below that// depending on the set value below and a too-large -ve adjustment.

Aren't those strobes and nav lights flashing a bit faster than they ought to? I don't own the TOS on DVD or anything to check, but if memory serves me, they shouldn't be at that frequency.

I spent a lot of time going over clips from the show (the original, not remastered) and after eliminating any shots where the editor had sped up or slowed down the shot I found that these timings were the most common:

Running (saucer) lights: 1.5 sec on, 0.5 sec off

Strobes (aft secondary hull): flash twice per second, on for around 0.2 sec

There were other timings for the running lights I noted during my investigation:

Thank you for sharing all your hard work! I plan on adapting this to the 1/650 TOS Enterprise. Any words of wisdom?

The main board here for controlling motor speed & direction (plus the blinking running/strobe lights) will work just fine with any scale, but my nacelle boards for the warp engine lights are sized for the 1/350 TOS E Polar Lights kit and can't be shrunk for a smaller scale. Did you perhaps mean "1/350"?

The main board here for controlling motor speed & direction (plus the blinking running/strobe lights) will work just fine with any scale, but my nacelle boards for the warp engine lights are sized for the 1/350 TOS E Polar Lights kit and can't be shrunk for a smaller scale. Did you perhaps mean "1/350"?

This will be for the AMT 1/650 Enterprise kit. I have looked at many bussard solutions for this kit, but yours is the most authentic. Yes, I figured the nacelle boards would need the most modification. I might have to change the nacelle boards to a different shape (even splitting them in half) then use it in a light box with fiber optics to the bussards. That is just one idea. Should be fun to figure out.

The main board here for controlling motor speed & direction (plus the blinking running/strobe lights) will work just fine with any scale, but my nacelle boards for the warp engine lights are sized for the 1/350 TOS E Polar Lights kit and can't be shrunk for a smaller scale. Did you perhaps mean "1/350"?

This will be for the AMT 1/650 Enterprise kit. I have looked at many bussard solutions for this kit, but yours is the most authentic. Yes, I figured the nacelle boards would need the most modification. I might have to change the nacelle boards to a different shape (even splitting them in half) then use it in a light box with fiber optics to the bussards. That is just one idea. Should be fun to figure out.

At about the 4:40 mark you can see the strobes and running lights pretty clearly, although I do think this specific shot is **slightly** speeded up. This is from the 3rd season, where I feel we got better shots of the production version of the ship as opposed to stock shots of the pilot version.

I checked out your link and it would seem the motor is not exactly as pictured, as it mentions a gear head but just shows one long motor shaft. Show us a photo when you get them.

I got these bearings from Electronic Goldmine: G16273B (Pkg 4) 0.43L x 0.41 Diameter Precision Roller Bearings, but I would also recommend getting some old IBM IDE drives and taking them apart to get the platter bearing - they're very smooth but the screw thread is NOT 4/40.

Ah, ok, I was thinking the bronze colored part of the motor was a gear housing, and you removed that. Looks like you kept that in place, and removed the 90 degree gear drive in the document you linked?

Ah, ok, I was thinking the bronze colored part of the motor was a gear housing, and you removed that. Looks like you kept that in place, and removed the 90 degree gear drive in the document you linked?

Correct. If yours is anything like mine, the rear part of the motor is the encoder (which you do not need but do not try to remove it - I tried it and ruined one) and the gear housing attached to the motor shaft made it 90 degrees.